


small wonders

by openhearts



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Gen, Season 5 Episode 16, season 5 episode 15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-24
Updated: 2009-02-24
Packaged: 2019-07-29 19:10:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16270535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openhearts/pseuds/openhearts
Summary: “Dr. Cameron.”She stopped her writing and stared over at him. “Dr. House?” She played briefly with a light tone, dancing on the edge between going along and diving in. She clicked her pen closed.He glanced around again. The ER was slow, just a few scattered patients and the crew was light so there weren’t nurses milling around the desk as usual.“I need a prescription.”





	small wonders

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Livejournal on 2/24/2009

“Need a favor.”

“None of my patients have even remotely diagnostically interesting conditions, House. You’re not going to find another possessed priest.”

“Disillusioned magician? Depressed life coach? Anorexic chef?”

Cameron chuckled grimly and shook her head. “That’s terrible,” she sighed.

He sidled up to her until they leaned against the ER desk with arms touching from shoulder to elbow. House folded his hands and squinted into the distance. He fiddled.

“Dr. Cameron.”

She stopped her writing and stared over at him. “Dr. House?” She played briefly with a light tone, dancing on the edge between going along and diving in. She clicked her pen closed.

He glanced around again. The ER was slow, just a few scattered patients and the crew was light so there weren’t nurses milling around the desk as usual.

“I need a prescription.”

She regarded the pause in his eyes when they caught and held hers. Something when he looked at her like that made things go liquid and spin around her even still. Six years hadn’t dulled the effect.

She broke it, pulled away, and reached into her lab coat pocket for her prescription pad. He waited until the moment her pen touched the paper to add,

“Not for Vicodin.”

She clicked her pen back in and set it down. A tiny blob of ink remained on the paper, waiting. She folded her hands on top of the prescription pad and looked at him squarely, silent.

She waited.

“I need Methadone.”

“You want to go off Vicodin?”

“I want to not be in pain.”

“Why now? Why not try this years ago when Vicodin wasn’t enough?”

He scrunched his face up, looking back out to the middle-distance.

“You ask why, I ask why not?”

They stared for an interminable time, eyes sparring recklessly as they ever had. Flashes and deadly blows dealt silently with a flick of the lash or a sharpening glint. He broke it, looking away again, fiddled again. He winced as he shifted his weight and she carefully measured the action. It wasn’t subtle enough to be a put-on gesture for her benefit. He knew she knew him better than that by now.

His mouth worked around a word for a few moments before it came out, directed at a heart monitor in a nearby exam area.

“Please.”

He waited. He knew if he looked at her again he would see her staring at the nothing he’d distracted himself with as she weighed his request. He didn’t watch though. He knew what her face looked like during a differential.

He heard her pen click again, and the feeling welling up through his absent thigh muscles, through his gut, flickering up his arms, drying his mouth and squeezing down his throat . . . it couldn’t be fear, but it couldn’t be happiness either.

She held the paper out, crisp tear still ringing in his ears. He took a brief sensation of her fingertips along with the paper.

He held it, flicked one fingernail against it a few times just to hear the noise. Just to make it real.

“Your g’s are still girly,” he said quietly with a cautious levity.

“Not now,” she sighed against his teasing. She dug her fingers into her forehead and then through her hair, eyes screwed shut against the lights and the sounds and the everything.

When she opened her eyes again she was back to business, shifting the charts into a different version of the same pile. She gathered them into her arms and rested the pile against her stomach. She turned, away from him, and was almost into her first step when he spoke.

“Thank you.”

She paused, didn’t turn around, just turned her face to the side to catch him in the corner of her eye. He, a slim dark shadow with a familiar face, propped against the desk. She realized in the moment that it always felt like he was in the corners of her eyes and maybe always would. A sigh slipped over Cameron’s lips and she turned back to face forward.

“Good luck House.”


End file.
